Just saying a server is '100% legit' is quite vague. Now you could say "All of our builds on this server are 100% legit" and you have a bit more meaning to the term.

As far as your world editing woes, I would personally say it is no longer legit once you copy it over from world to world. So when we start new maps on our servers, we start from scratch in EVERYTHING, including land and items. We are proud at AWNW to say that every build (excluding spawn) is player made and 100% legit, because all items are gathered by someone at some point on that maps life cycle.

But when I see a server saying they are '100% legit' I assume they don't understand the term and just want to sound cool. Have to be more specific when using it.

If you are looking for people to trust RIGHT away? Only people you know in real life...

If your hoping to gather a trustworthy team via the internet, it will take time. I'd say after 1.5 years of having our servers online, there isn't one person on my own staff that I would trust to have access to our dedicated. And we have an awesome dedicated staff of Mods and Admin too, but I could never let someone I don't know IRL have deep access to our server, so it's only myself and my wife.

Wish I had better advice on that front, but it's the way it is. You'r servers will always be at risk if your entrusting bits of it to people you don't know extremely well. Good luck though!

Honestly, sounds like that owner does not have enough control and does not spend enough time among the community and seeing that crap from happening.

My wife and I stay waist deep in our community, and are always aware of what goes on between players and staff. We set detailed rules for our staff, and don't give them powers they don't need (like world edit). We have also had long term players create little cliques together and shun out others. If they are even remotely rude to other players, especially in global type chat, we will punish them accordingly.

I'd say the problem stems from your owner, he needs to get a tighter leash on what goes on in his/her server. His initial response of 'oh kick and mute' is fairly accurate, even if you can't watch the server 24/7. Have a place/forum where players can report other players for being rude or harassing them, that way if there is no staff on to handle them, it can be dealt with eventually.

Not often, but a few. We have a very strong community and communicate with all our players. I do recall one 5 year old whose mom whitelisted her, and even told us that she explained the rules to her, but if she breaks them, to go ahead and ban her right away lol. She did get banned within a couple days for griefing :P

We have never set an age limit on our server, and never will. We ask for an age on our application, but we never use it as a judgement, just as information.

Over the last year and a half, we have met MANY awesome young ones from 5 to 18 years old, some which act super mature, and some act their age or worse. But we have also met PLENTY of 18+ players who act like immature pricks because they feel entitled as an 'adult' on the server.

One of our admins is 13, and has been an Admin for us off and on for way over a year now, and has been more mature than many of our adult players.

No matter what kind of server you are running, make sure to always stay VERY involved in your community. And also give your new whitelisters a reason to stick around! Offer ranks they can 'unlock' the longer they play, with some sort of in game perks. Or some other end game goals depending on what kind of server you are running of course.

Our server is whitelist, and we still have a 10 question testing area that players have to go through regardless. This ensures they have read the rules/info in the starting area, and if they haven't, when they get banned, we can assure them it was in the area they went through testing. Makes ban appeals nice and easy to deal with. Here are some questions we use:

Can you grief or break into players homes or buildings?

If a player is offline for a long period of time, is their home and other buildings considered abandoned?

My friends new, can a Mod/Admin TP them to me please?

What do you do if you think you have been griefed?

May I discus religion and politics in global chat?

Can I build in The End or make an Enderman Farm?

How much is 1 Gold Ingot worth on our server?

Is leveling and doing things while AFK allowed?

What is the max level you can reach in a mcMMO skill on our server?

How far do I have to build from others (without permission)?

Hope this helps or gives any ideas. Answering general questions about rules and plugins is great. Mind you, we have a whitelist server, so our community is a bit more tight knit and players LOVE our testing area. I have no idea what it does for public servers.

On our server, we train our staff to be respectful and professional to every single player, no matter their age or rank. If we ever catch a staff member being rude, disrespectful, abusing power, etc, we will issue them a Mod/Admin Infraction as an only warning, and if it continues, they will be demoted.

We started our community with Reddit as well, and it helped us so much, as we had so many great players join from Reddit. I recently made a new Ad on /r/mcservers just to show our love for Reddit again. Here's the response :D

Notable Plugin/Mod: While we do customize as many plugins as we can, what makes our server #1 is our community and staff. Everyone is treated fairly no matter your age, gender, etc.

Community Vibe: Best Minecraft Community you will ever find. Everyone is friendly, helpful, and have all sorts of awesome personalities. We have super mega builders on our survival servers, and good PVP'ers on our PVP server. Such a broad range.

Looking For: More awesome friends to add to the AWNW family!

Building Type: Free Build. Use your imagination and just have fun!

Slots/Average/Peak: 250/110/200 (This is combined across all servers)

World Size: 20k x 20k Square Survival, 17k x 17k Square PVP, and Skyblock is whatever you make it lol.

Other Comments: AWNW is something my wife and I created over a year ago, and it has grown immensely. We were dedicated to only being a whitelist server, and we strive to be the best and most popular whitelist server there can be, and we have achieved that goal. If you just want to play Minecraft while hanging out and chatting with new friends, then AWNW is a perfect fit for you :)

Back when we were a small whitelist server, my wife and I would get to know everyone, and recruit those we thought fit the bill, and it has worked very well. We still have Admins from over a year ago lol.

Nowadays, with 100+ people playing on our whitelist servers, we found it hard to keep track and get to know EVERYONE so we thought we maybe were missing out on players who would be good candidates. So we made a watered down position called a Moderator and open applications for them once in a while. Our current admins can comment on them and give their opinion, and we eventually get a couple good candidates out of it.

And we hand pick Admins from Mods that perform well. Works out pretty well for us :)

Oh it's legit. Reddit is the main resource of our servers main player-base when we first went public. And I have not posted an ad here in so long, I thought I would share the love once again. So I merely made a post on our forums for our members to show how much they love AWNW on our Reddit post.